WinBack is a challenging & entertaining game, though repetitive. (contains spoilers)
I'll start off by saying this game is wicked repetitive, but it is fun. To start off your main weapon, the handgun, has unlimited ammo and will quickly force you to choose it as your weapon of choice. You run around as Jean, doing rolls, aiming with the R1 and firing with the X buttons, pressing up against crates & walls for cover, flicking switches, blowing up laser boxes, shooting more terrorists een though you are heavily outnumbered (usually 4 or 5 against one), and collecting the very small array of generic weapons - a shotgun, an assault rifle, and a silenced handgun. Oh, you also get a flashlight later in the game.. dont know if I should mention that.
There is a "Bot Challenge Mode" where you run around (depending on the challenge) either alone or with a computer controlled bot and fight off other teams of bots. I believe there is 20 challenge missions? Whatever. As you beat them you unlock characters to use in multiplayer mode. Hah, multiplayer mode is where the real fun is at. You and, if you have the multi-tap adapter, 3 friends can go either toe to toe in a free for all or a team match in a variety of stages where anything is cover and you can jump over railings and what not. Its really fun.
Sadly, the enemies attack patterns are bland and very predictable. You pop out from cover, shoot two or three times, take cover again, and the enemies shoot once or twice, then stop and stand there as you jump out from cover and repeat the whole process again. Unfortunatley, the aiming system doesn't really help out in a lot of spots. Lets say there is a guy standing on a ledge above you who poses the biggest threat, and there is a guy below you - more than once I found myself jumping out thinking I was going to aim at the ledge man only to find my gun pointed at the ground guy. Sure you can manually aim, but by the time you begin raising your handgun or whatever up you have already been shot once or twice. You'll hit them only if your lucky, or you'll die first.
What I thought was really cool in WinBack was the fact that you ran into your entire team as you progress in the game.. and almost all of them die in some brutal way or another, but after witnessing their deaths you (the player) feel you must avenge them. Take the guy Law who, after forcing you to go onto an elevator alone because enemies were coming and he insisted he would slow you down, fights & kills all the terrorists after sustaining a few more wounds.... then as he sits down to recoup, Cecile (one of the main enemies) comes and caps him right in the head. Or take Mike Hawkins, the fat pony-tailed demolitions expert in SCAT, who opens an elevator and catches a whole clip of rounds by a boss right in front of your eyes. Although there is no blood, and the enemies blink & dissapear as if it was on the NES system, the game is pretty violent and really helps add realism to the game.
The voice acting takes away from the realism of the game, sadly. There is almost no emotion in any of the characters exept the generic terrorists who scream "STOP!" or "HOLD IT!!". Jean-Luc in particular sounds unenthused and straight up bored in every cut scene. I guess I can't say too much figuring N64's WinBack had no voices just dialouge boxes. However, the music, although many don't like it, sounds pretty good. It is a sort of an eerie techno beat which, I guess, helps add darkness and hart pounding sensations to the atmosphere.
Generally speaking the graphics are alright. The character models of the SCAT members look really good & smooth compared to WinBack's N64's release. The stages are massive and pretty detailed with graffiti sprayed around and boxes and ladders and stuff scattered around.. did I mention the levels were massive? The terrorists look pretty interesting, but look good all the same. However, some of the bosses, look lame - like this big diesel guy with a huge .50 caliber machine gun.... and a purple shirt. Come on now.
I'll tell you straight up this game is hard and pretty long (31 missions), with only a handful of checkpoints scattered in each level. Boss fights are hard where, just like in Spartan Total Warrior, you'll fight the boss in a small room while fending off against a bunch of other average terrorists while avoiding exploding barrels or lasers. Other times you'll enter a narrow hallway with two large windows on your right and left and as you walk into the room enemies come pouring in behind you, to your sides, and in front of you and all you have to use as cover is speed, rolling, and a single box. Oddly, if you take too long or take too much damage, it actually effects the ending. My ending for this PS2 release was garbage - my entire team got killed except the geek Keith. Jean-Luc & Keith stand on a helipad, waiting for a chopper above them to evac them outta there. WinBack Mission Complete!!
Once you beat the game, depending on your score and what difficulty you played it on, you can unlock "Max Power Mode" (which is basically infinite ammo for each gun), or "Trial Mode" where you pick a level and run through it as fast as you can to test your speed.
To finish this lengthy review, I am going to suggest if you like shooting things, are a fan of the N64 version, or simply want to see how your entire team dies then play through WinBack: Covert Operations atleast once. Although hard, the game can be & is a fun, interesting experience.